The New Housing System is Terrible

[Ashemmi]

Lottery system is miles better than clicking a placard, with hidden timer. The Need/Greed loot system. Its rng. Need can be used for those who don't own one yet. Greed for FC with existing housing already/relocate/or alts.

On the surface, yes, in practice, no. When new housing wards appear, an active FC with many members and offering events who exists in a small is made unable to upgrade because the new player/fc has priority. It is incredibly simple to create an FC and park three of your closest bots/friends in it. This suggestion would feed RMT and make the current situation worse. I do understand your intent, you want to give an opportunity to legitimate players who do not have...

If SE truly wants to get rid of RMT and scalping as well as offering the ability to new players the *only* solution which works is to have the system be scalable. Wards should be available on demand. Smalls will sell for market value because there is no incentive otherwise, though some in certain locations (Mist Beachfront for example), might yield a bit of a premium. Mediums and Larges, because of relative rarity, would sell on the player market for more...but prices wouldn't climb as high.

[Edax]

The New Housing System is Terrible

What's the "new" housing system?

[Belisaire]

The timer existing isn't really the problem. It has definitely damaged the market for people who seek to acquire housing to buy just to flip it for crazy prices. No one wants to see that happen again.

The timer being invisible though, is a big problem. I don't know how many hours I spent until I finally beat Placard savage, but its hardly something I enjoyed or take pride in. I think the timer being random is fine, but the countdown should be broadcast out to everyone. Sure, people will crowd the placard when the timer is almost up, but people are already doing that anyways. Better to waste people's time in small doses than the multi-hour affairs we have going on right now.

I think the goal they were trying to achieve with the timer being invisible was to discourage players from camping the placard, but that certainly hasn't been the result. So just let the timer be known to everyone. This will still prevent people from reselling the plot in the way it does now, because no one is going to throw down millions and millions of gil for a house that's even on a known but randomly generated timer.

[Packetdancer]

The timer being invisible though, is a big problem. I don't know how many hours I spent until I finally beat Placard savage, but its hardly something I enjoyed or take pride in. I think the timer being random is fine, but the countdown should be broadcast out to everyone. Sure, people will crowd the placard when the timer is almost up, but people are already doing that anyways. Better to waste people's time in small doses than the multi-hour affairs we have going on right now.

This.

I have a small house. I only have a small house through dumb luck. When they did the last housing ward expansion and people relocated their houses to the then-new wards (which were, at the time, FC and relocation only), I ran around all the original (less-in-demand) housing wards trying to find a now-vacant plot. Many of them had someone already camping the sign and I didn't want to get into a clicking war and potentially snipe a house out from under someone who was already waiting, and the two I sat at clicking while I waited for the timer to tick down ended up vanishing from under me when people relocated houses into those plots.

After several hours I gave up and bounced back to my FC house in Shirogane. And then thought "Hey, I wonder if there are any here in Shirogane." And I saw there was one plot still available. So I wandered over and thought, "Oh, this is a lovely spot. Well, I'll click and get rejected, and then I'll call it a night and do something else." And I clicked on the sign...

And suddenly I owned a house.

Surprisingly, my little corner of Shirogane is actually reasonably active; while I was gleefully playing around in my new yard setting things up, a couple of my neighbors came over to welcome me. Two brought housewarming gifts, we chatted, I put them on my friends list, and I've run roulettes with one of them periodically. When I relocate to Ishgard (because ISHGARD), I will miss my neighbors. So I get what Square-Enix wants with the neighborhoods.

But I only landed where I am via dumb blind luck. And dumb blind luck is not a viable basis on which a housing market should operate.

And given that housing in this game gates participation in other systems, that's a problem.

[Cagi]

This.

I have a small house. I only have a small house through dumb luck. When they did the last housing ward expansion and people relocated their houses to the then-new wards (which were, at the time, FC and relocation only), I ran around all the original (less-in-demand) housing wards trying to find a now-vacant plot. Many of them had someone already camping the sign and I didn't want to get into a clicking war and potentially snipe a house out from under someone who was already waiting, and the two I sat at clicking while I waited for the timer to tick down ended up vanishing from under me when people relocated houses into those plots.

After several hours I gave up and bounced back to my FC house in Shirogane. And then thought "Hey, I wonder if there are any here in Shirogane." And I saw there was one plot still available. So I wandered over and thought, "Oh, this is a lovely spot. Well, I'll click and get rejected, and then I'll call it a night and do something else." And I clicked on the sign...

And suddenly I owned a house.

Surprisingly, my little corner of Shirogane is actually reasonably active; while I was gleefully playing around in my new yard setting things up, a couple of my neighbors came over to welcome me. Two brought housewarming gifts, we chatted, I put them on my friends list, and I've run roulettes with one of them periodically. When I relocate to Ishgard (because ISHGARD), I will miss my neighbors. So I get what Square-Enix wants with the neighborhoods.

But I only landed where I am via dumb blind luck. And dumb blind luck is not a viable basis on which a housing market should operate.

And given that housing in this game gates participation in other systems, that's a problem.

Essentially this. This doesn't need to come from someone who hasn't been able to get a home. What I've been saying is I see one evil as lesser while it's apparent others view otherwise. Packet makes a good emphasis on this problem since the random timer is worse than an actual lottery. At least with that, people wouldn't be angry at each other for trying to snipe and we wouldn't have to suffer to get it.
I state that I prefer the older system over the timer because the timer inspires antisocial and hostile behaviour. Between corruption and toxicity, I'd begrudgingly take the former over the latter, though it's extremely apparent SE needs to take a step back and go back to the drawing board on how to resolve this crisis, because neither is acceptable, and it's only going to take so long before people ultimately get fed up with their poor management.

[Gothicshark]

I'm putting this out here because of the recent patch causing another rush of players charging the houses to each other's despair, and I would like to say this:

The random timer should be removed.

No

1. Players will be able to free up spots for each other through communication and coordination. Is there a potential bias to this? Of course. MMOs are about making friends, so what's stopping you?
2. Buying from someone who supposedly 'gouges prices' actually gives you value for your money, as you are acquiring the plot without the added anxiety of this toxic competition for what should be a feature for everyone.
3. Reporting players has always been a feature, and if someone is going in with this kind of transaction, they can prepare screenshots to make sure the seller remains true to their word, or report if they are charging well more than is necessary (which can always be established as a rule, ToS changes often).
4. Meritocracy has never worked. The random timer has forced people to suffer just for a chance at a home. The moment a game causes you genuine distress just to use a basic feature, you know it needs reworking.
5. A player housing market for all its flaws allowed players to have a degree of control. The beauty of FFXIV is that it doesn't resemble the real world entirely in its economy, as the game doesn't account for inflation in the player economy. Anyone can get the money needed to buy from a seller, and in a much shorter span of time than we'd expect.

Terrible idea, honestly No. Want to cause people to leave this game for good, do this. Square needs to remove the scarcity of housing, not increase it.

Thought gold sellers were bad, now let the control of the housing market. No longer do you fight against players with click bots, now you fight against Real Money sellers. Buying up entire wards, and selling them for cash outside of the game.

What Square needs to do is make the Houses Shard based and unlimited. Yes, this means random people can't walk by and see your hot pink manor and collection of toys in the front yard, but let's get real most people don't look or care anyway. Doing what WOW did making player housing shard-based allowed for every player to have a "Home" (sadly they ruined it in other ways). Instead of making more wards, they could collapse the wards down, and players could then all buy the house they most want. To visit a home the placard outside the house would be used.

[Khalithar]

So I understand what you're saying OP but you're missing something very important.

All the complaints you listed are not problems, they are *symptoms* of a much larger problem, namely the housing system itself.

The change that needs to happen is that EVERY player should be able to buy a house so long as they have the gil, instead of people arguing over the merits of the timers here, we should all be demanding SE implement proper instanced housing so that everyone can get one. Anything less than that is, and will always be, unacceptable.

[KayRadley]

This is not the housing forum, chief.

[MsQi]

... The moment a game causes you genuine distress just to use a basic feature, you know it needs reworking.

I assume you are talking about how the placards work. I have to agree it is poorly designed. Everything you see seems to indicate that you can purchase the property. It even confirms what you are purchasing for. Then it it says you can't purchase it because it's "not ready". If they insist on having a hidden timer they should just gray out the button or replace the button with the words "not ready for purchase". The way it works now is kind of sadistic. Of course those who do it a lot quickly grow numb to it, but that is not good for people psychologically. It's also just bad interface design. Something that appears like it should do something, should do that thing. If it's not going to do that that thing at this time it should be inactive, or at the very least have some indication that you are taking a chance. Maybe put "Attempt to Purchase Land"?

[NanaWiloh]

I assume you are talking about how the placards work. I have to agree it is poorly designed. Everything you see seems to indicate that you can purchase the property. It even confirms what you are purchasing for. Then it it says you can't purchase it because it's "not ready". If they insist on having a hidden timer they should just gray out the button or replace the button with the words "not ready for purchase". The way it works now is kind of sadistic. Of course those who do it a lot quickly grow numb to it, but that is not good for people psychologically. It's also just bad interface design. Something that appears like it should do something, should do that thing. If it's not going to do that that thing at this time it should be inactive, or at the very least have some indication that you are taking a chance. Maybe put "Attempt to Purchase Land"?

Idea I had on the way home allow people to click purchase only 3 times in one day and no more, unless the house comes up for purchasing then they can click it again.